Quilting Butterfly Wings and a Great Deal on My Class

Bet that title got your attention! When life hands you many quilting samples and halloween is coming, you make butterfly wings out of them. Or at least you do when your daughter wants to be a butterfly fairy princess!

I'll try to get some pics of the winged princess later. I could have saved myself a bunch of time with those cheap discount store wings, but they're made for younger girls and are usually broken in a few days.

As a Christian, I've always been conflicted about halloween and this was the first year we decided to let them dress up and take them to a "Trunk or Treat". For those who don't know what that is, it's like trick or treating but in a parking lot using car trunks instead of houses. It's become more popular in rural areas where houses are far apart, and it's also seen as more of a community event and safer. Ours was at our new church and keeps the costumes in the realm of 'cute' instead of gory or oversexualized.

The kids and I had fun making some simple costumes. I'll have to get some better ones of the wings. She didn't want to stop twirling long enough for a photo. Made the skirt too. It's a hi-low number and it looks to have rotated to the side with the twirling!

I also wanted to let you know Craftsy's got a great sale going on this weekend! Fall is such a great time to snuggle up on the couch and do some handwork, work with yarn, draw, embroider, or learn new skills at Craftsy. Stay in your PJ's and learn a new skill or expand your current skills. All classes are up to 50% off when you use my discount link: sorry, the link has expired.

Now I've got to see if I can get the sparkles off of my sewing table!

Never Underestimate the Power of a Woman with a Sewing Machine, Revisited

You might remember this project from a post published last November. It's been needing a little something more and this weekend I finished it off. If you didn't see that post and I know there are a bunch of new readers here, go check it out and watch the two related videos, one is a speedy time-lapse number. We'll be here when you're done!

 The stitching was great but just not dense enough for the letters to pop out and be readable from a distance. Since this has been my battle-cry of sorts this past year, I wanted to see those words.

Using a technique I learned from Irena Bluhm several years ago (from her QNN videos), I used Dewent Inktense pencils and textile medium to carefully paint inside the stitching of the letters. It's kind of hard to get the shading just right without adding so much water that the color bleeds, but I really like the results.

I think it's a lot better now that the words are colored. This is hanging in my studio directly across from the front door, so I can see it often and if it serves as a little reminder to those coming in the house that I'm not just sitting around eating bon-bons, I'm OK with that.

I'm working on getting my newsletter ready to send out this week. If you haven't subscribed to it, there's time. Just enter your first and last name as well as your email address in the short form along the right sidebar.

Hope you've made some time for creativity in your life this weekend!

Paint and Stitch

I shared my small fall wall hanging on Friday (Can you tell I read a lot of kids' books?) and while I had a lot of fun with the free motion quilting, I
thought it needed a little something extra. I was thinking paint or hyperquilting.

I did both!

The quilt before:

While the green color in particular isn't quite like I wanted, I think the painting turned out quite well. (Mostly)

And then I did some hyperquilting in the feathers with a varigated Rainbows thread from Superior Threads. My hyperquilting is  based on several books by Patsy Thompson and her Hyperquilting! book in particular. I just added a little inner loopy thing to each feather plume.

Now I just have to get this thing bound and figure out what I'm going to do with it. And in the meantime, my brain is working on a plan for a McTavishing Monday, or maybe the Monday McTavish-along. And more ruler work tutorials and ideas. And I'm moving my sewing space into the living room!

Yes, into the living room. As in, the first thing you see from the front door! I've been getting a little quilting business from others and it's just really awkward having strangers (even quilty strangers) come into my bedroom to lay out a quilt and discuss quilting designs and what-have-you. Not to mention having to tidy up (or keep tidy, since some friends consider me a bit of a neat freak) 4 rooms between the front door and my sewing space in my bedroom. I do have three kids here all day, every day and it's normal that things get messy.

The big deal is getting my beloved Janome 6600 fit into a new table for the living room as its current spot is a built in counter top. Hubby is working on cutting a hole into a second hand table as I write.

I'm linking this with Connie's  Linky Tuesday at Freemotion by the River.

Video: Quilted Christmas Lights

I finally got the video uploaded and edited from my Quilted Christmas Lights project, which I blogged about last week. Hope you like it! As I mentioned in the post, it also features the voices of my children in the background along with me using my Super-Mommy voice.

Quilted Lights Made from Kids' Fingerprints

 I realize Christmas has come and gone a while ago, but I thought I'd share this simple table topper with you. I didn't actually get it done in time for Christmas, but the important thing is that this is a memory maker for us. The light bulbs are actually made from my children's thumb prints.

I fused some Wonder Under 805 to the back of some white cotton fabric and then used Pebeo Setacolor paints and also Lumiere metallic paint for the yellowish green 'light' (My daughter loves a little bling.) I carefully made thumbprints with each child and then when they dried, cut the 'bulbs' out and fused them onto the background fabric.

 

A little fun quilting in Superiors' thick #30/3 poly once called New Brytes and now renamed Sew Fine 30, to make the thumb prints into a string of lights and to quilt the year on to it. Then a little glitter to stitch the bulbs down and do a little quilting in the background. I tried to make it look like flashes of light around the bulbs.

I also used a decorative stitch around the edge since I used the pillowcase method to finish the edges instead of a binding.

I had forgotten I had made a video of  me doing some of the quilting and found it when I loaded these pics onto the blog. I'll see if I can't get it posted soon. The kids' quiet time finished up just as I was video taping, so there are some guest voices on it. [Edited to add: Video post here: Video: Quilted Christmas Lights]

Now, back to quilting!

Leslie at MarveLes Art Studio has been experimenting with Derwent Inktense pencils, so I thought I'd post what I did with mine.

My daughter is convinced that this is a family portrait!

A little quilty doodling, apply some textile medium and start coloring, just like a coloring book. Fun!

It is my understanding that the textile medium might not be needed, but this is what I have done and it's been through the washer already with no fading.

I can't wait to see what Leslie comes up with!

Art Quilt Explorers

I started attending a group in the nearby city for those interested in surface design and art quilting. It's an off-shoot of the guild there and since it's all about learning and exploring new techniques, it's called the Explorers.

It's a bit difficult for me to make the meetings since it requires a day time babysitter. I have had two friends tell me that after seeing my work on "Poured Out" that I need to pursue my quilting and they are interested in helping me do that by watching the kids sometimes for these meetings. Love my friends!

The small local group that I am a part of is very traditional and it seems that many are at a  beginner to intermediate skill level, so I am not able to find too much instruction or mentoring there, not because I am so advanced (I'm not), but because I am a bit "out of the box". They are however a friendly group and I hate that I can't attend more of the meetings. I have talked to the owner of the quilt shop who is the group's leader and we are beginning a new offshoot group that will meet at night. I'll be the main leader of this group, and while it won't be an art quilters group, we will be trying some new techniques and trying to appeal to the more adventurous and hopefully, some younger quilters.

But the Explorers group is quite fun! Last time we met, we decided on a challenge, to make a quilt inspired by a single photo and then we did some playing with fabric paint and stamping. And I really played! I've had a collection of paints for a while, Setacolor and Lumiere, but hadn't really played with them. There's a line from one of the homeschooling methods that I employ, which is, "Let the mother come out to play!" That line was in my head as I painted and stamped, ran my fingers across my painted work surface to make a design and printed it. Fun!

I haven't officially joined the  Explorers group as I need to attend a meeting of the main guild and pay dues. Something I'm willing to do, but just haven't arranged for yet. That group is larger and has more talented quilters in it, still nobody my age, and when a group leader asked if anyone was interested in Modern Quilting, the consensus was, "What's that?"

My point of all this? If most of your quilting interaction is via internet or magazines, get out and try to find a guild! There may not be a perfect fit, but it will stretch you as a quilter and it can be a lot of fun!